Day One sightseeing in Berlin

---

Wednesday 12th August
Day One sightseeing in Berlin
A good nights sleep and we are ready for day one of sightseeing in Berlin,a city with plenty of history to get involved in.
With the Kaufland supermarket just a step or two away from the hotel we called in to get supplies for breakfast.By the process of elimination we think we have bought milk although there isn’t a picture of a cow on the container as you might expect but the OJ was a giveaway with a picture of an orange being squeezed.Prices here are so much cheaper than we have encountered in the Euro zone so far.And although we don’t need any bottles of wine were as cheap as €1.99!!!
RR is going to be parked up for the next 3 days in the car parking building across the way while we take the train to the city and save heaps in trying to find a car park in the city at some huge cost.
The young lady on the front desk,who speaks very good English,gave us instructions of how to buy a Berlin pass at the kiosk next to the supermarket that would enable us to travel on all modes of transport as well as discounts off many attractions.So at €16 for two days it seems like a good deal for the BBA.We could buy the pass on the railway station but we assume that we should get a booklet for the discounts and there wasn’t any of these on the station that we could see.
So on our way to the station we called into the kiosk and stepped up to the woman behind the counter and asked for a two day pass please!!She thought we wanted two single tickets and produced those from a machine.However we noticed what was on the tickets and said no we needed the two day pass.She got the booklet out that we thought we would get and after much gesturing and page changing and some valuable help from a young German woman we got the 2 day pass we needed and we were on our way.
The train delivered us downtown and we switched to the underground and eventually got to our first destination,The Jewish Museum.
The museum is only a few years old and so the design is rather modern but very appropriate to what the designer,a New York Jewish architectural designer,wanted to convey in a city where the Jews have had a turbulent history.
There had been Jews living in Berlin for many years but in the early 1900’s as Jews were being forced out of Eastern Europe many decided that Germany would suit them to settle as they took to the lifestyle here.The local Jewish community didn’t necessarily take to the new Jews from Eastern Europe as they practiced their religion in a different way.
The museum tells the story of the growth of the Jewish population during the early 1900’s,the rise of the Nazis and persecution of the Jewish community that started before WW2 began but increased as the war saw the Nazis rise in power and endeavour to wipe the race in Europe out completly and how the Jewish community re-established itself in Berlin after the war finished to modern time.
The museum was a rather sobering place to start our sightseeing in Berlin and we needed a break for a coffee and found a Starbucks at Checkpoint Charlie to regather ourselves.
At the Checkpoint Charlie site there is still part of the old wall standing along with information boards giving the history of the wall.There were crowds of people milling around what is probably the most photographed site about the Wall in the city.
The Checkpoint Charlie Museum was next and at first we thought we had taken the wrong option as the place was packed in the first couple of exhibition rooms.The museum was set up by a guy who has effectively recorded the history of the Wall in his museum since it was built in 1962.However the crowds seemed to disperse as we got further into the museum which is under reconstruction.The whole thing was a bit disorganised with the history timeline being mixed up a bit but perhaps once the reconstruction is completed it may be easier to follow.
Anyway it was still very interesting as stories and history of the wall came together along with items such as cars,canoes and other modes of transport that East Berliners used to try and get to West Berlin under,over and through the Wall !!!
On leaving the museum we watched a young “gypsy’girl approach a family for money.She had already tried us earlier while we were reading the information boards on the Wall and we had ignored her.
However the father of the family took her across to a kebab house and brought her a large doner kebab,which we were sure she didn’t really want!! So we thought we would just wait and she what she did after the family left her.Initially it looked like she tried to sell the kebab to people coming past her but with no luck.A young boy of the same gypsy origin joined her and she split the kebab with him and went back to her approaches to tourists looking for money!!
We ended our day by taking a stroll through the Potsdam Plaza which has undergone a huge amount of commercial redevelopment over the past 20 years as for the years that the Wall had been there it was effectively a no mans land.
We tried to locate where Hitlers bunker was and where he took his life just before Berlin fell to the Allies,adjacent to the plaza but the locals would prefer to forget this part of their history as the where the bunker used to be is no longer marked like many other sites.
We couldn’t get a full tourists view of the Brandenburg Gate as the area was being blocked off ready for a weeks worth of concerts due to begin tomorrow.So we found a railway station and waited for a train to take us home after a full day out.
We finally made it to our station at Aldershof and headed off down the road to the bar where we enjoyed our beers last night.It was a bit of a trek but after a day on our feet we were ready to sample the €1 beers again to quench our thirst.
The waitress recognised us straight away and bought us two beers from their blackboard special.Soon after out came a bowl of crisps and pretzel sticks something we haven’t had for a long time.We remember when pretzels were all the rage back home but don’t know of anywhere you would get them served to you in NZ these days.
We sat back and enjoyed the early evening sun and the beers and then ordered another round while we sorted out what we still had to see tomorrow when we ventured back to the city again.
As we drank our second beer a guy across the courtyard started up a conversation.......in German!!Now we know little of spoken German and to date have been able to bluff our way through the conversations we have had in supermarkets and this morning when we purchased our 2 day Berlin train ticket.
The guy looked friendly enough and when we made it obvious we couldn’t understand him he picked up his chair and came over and joined us at our table.How far this conversation was going to get was anyones guess but like all our travel experiences to date we were up for whatever happened and really this is what travel is all about,meeting the locals !!!.
As time went on it was clear that his English was extremely limited as was our German but we still had a great conversation!!! We found out that his name was Frank and that he was married with a 24 year old son and that he did manual type work while his wife taught music.We tried to get across to him where we came from and even pointed out NZ on the map in the Lonely Planet book but he didn’t seem to understand where it was exactly other than it was a long way away.
He indicated on our map where the interesting places were for tourists to visit as well as pointing out where the wall used to stand and that the area we were in used to be part of East Germany.And as we were ready to head off back to our hotel he indicated that he wanted to buy us another round of beers.We thought it polite to accept and did so and continued the conversation with him most of which was in sign language except that every so often we picked up on a word or two that he said that made some sense to us and the same for what we were saying to him in English.Part way through our third beer he phoned his mother on his cellphone as she apparently spoke English and we thought he was going to invite her down to the bar to chat with us.Thankfully she declined as we wondered how we would ever get away home.
We went to excuse ourselves after we finished the round he had bought but he was insistant on us having him shout another round PLUS a round of schnaps!!Now 4 x 500mls of beer was more than enough for us and we politely but firmly declined the schnaps!! We need to get up fresh in the morning for more sightseeing!!He must have been enjoying the conversation and perhaps he was learning some English.
He seemed a bit disappointed that we said we must leave when we finished our last beer and we exited as smoothly as we could with firm handshakes and a kiss on both cheeks for Gretchen!!
Bed wasn’t far after we cooked our dinner in the microwave as it had been a long day made even longer by our stop in at the cafe for a quiet beer and meeting up with Frank!!

---

Comments

[Leebee]

Isnt it not too far from the Holocaust Memorial.....our guide on the excellent free walking tour of Berlin also pointed it out for us!!!